Dr. Fenton
speaker
189 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Fenton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And he did a pretty good job at making it seem like everything was okay. Even though his parents had expressed concern about his isolated behavior, they were told by a lot of people that that's just what it's like raising a teenager. But beneath the surface, it was much darker. The intrusive thoughts James had been having since he was a kid continued.
But it's around his high school year when they started branching out a bit. In addition to seeing people getting killed, he said he would sometimes picture the world getting wiped out with an atomic blast. Now, Dr. William Reed would later spend a lot of time with James Holmes. And in his book, A Dark Night in Aurora, he talked about these nuclear intrusive thoughts.
And to him, they represented James's fear of letting his anger take control.
So clearly, James had a problem with expressing himself. But holding everything in wasn't helping either. Anytime his brain wasn't occupied, these intrusive thoughts slipped into his psyche, consuming him. Now, up until this point, his intrusive thoughts never involved him. He would just see images of death, violence, and destruction.
But soon enough, he started having thoughts of being the cause of that death, violence, and destruction, that he was the person attacking or killing people. He would later say that he knew something was deeply wrong with him, but he didn't want people to know that, so he kept it hidden away.
Many people silently suffering with mental health problems, intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, or homicidal ideation think that keeping their thoughts inside will make them less real. But in reality, that only allows them to fester. That festering breeds shame, resentment, and hatred. which is why it is so important to share these things with a professional.
But on the outside, when people crossed paths with James Holmes, no one suspected a thing. He made good grades in school, he had a small group of friends, and he appeared to be a normal kid. His old friend, Alex Van Horn, would later say, "'There's people you see in high school "'that you worry about sometimes. "'He wasn't one of those.'"
Eventually, James would even graduate high school at the top of his class. He had also been accepted into a competitive internship at the San Diego Stock Institute, where he would be taking part in a neurobiology program. But his advisor said, "'Communicating with James was difficult,' I frequently had to ask yes or no questions to get responses from him.
And here is actually a short video of him at this internship.
Now at that point, James had already earned a full ride to the University of California, Riverside, where he was going to major in neuroscience. From appearances, he had a very successful future ahead of him.
With the distractions of school, his friends and video games, James was largely able to keep his violent thoughts at bay. However, he would later say that when left alone, the thoughts would creep back into the foreground. One specific thought that often came into his mind was about humanity as a whole and how he believed everyone would be better off dead.
James said that he ruminated on this thought for years, starting around 2006 all the way until 2010. In his exact words, he would later say this.
During his time at UC Riverside, James was in the honors program. And one requirement for that program was that he had to complete a certain number of volunteer hours per year. Everyone in the program was given this big list of options to choose from. And James chose to volunteer at an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico.
While there, he bought gifts for the children, he ate with them every day, and he played different sports, which is kind of crazy to think about. From what we know about James Holmes today, you wouldn't think that he liked children, but apparently he did.
In fact, during his undergrad program, he also worked as a camp counselor at Camp Max Strauss, which is a residential program for underprivileged youth. Now, one of the kids that James worked with that summer actually had schizophrenia. And James would later say, quote, these kids were heavily medicated, but this did not solve their problems, only create new ones.
The medication changed them from highly energetic, creative kids to lax beings who slept through activities. I wanted to help them, but I couldn't. End quote. Now, according to his coworkers, superiors, and the campers, James was a phenomenal counselor.
They did have to urge him to be a bit more outgoing, but other than that, they said he was positive, goofy with the kids, and great at making them feel safe, which is strangely what people said about James for a lot of his life. When he was a child, he would help lead the younger kids into Halloween haunted houses, comforting them and showing them that it wasn't that scary.
He didn't get joy out of watching them scared. Then as he got older, he routinely chose to work or volunteer with kids. Now, interestingly, years down the road after James had been arrested, he even expressed concern when he saw that some of his victims were children.
Disheartened by the rejections, James decided to return to his parents' house in San Diego. And for the first few weeks, he spent all of his time sleeping in and playing video games. Now I'm sure at first, his mom let him relax a little. After all, he had just earned his degree after a lot of hard work. But after a few weeks, Arlene told James that he had to go get a job.
She wasn't going to let him just rot away in his room all summer. So he eventually found work at Marical Incorporated, a supplement factory. James worked from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. five days a week, and he was in charge of operating a pill-coating machine. Now, his coworkers at this job said that he was definitely strange. One coworker said that it almost seemed like he had a mental condition.
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